Ayade Rejects Proposal to Introduce New Taxes, Says We’ll Rather Task Our Brains

Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State yesterday insisted that his administration would not impose further taxes on the people but would rather harness the natural resources that abound to better the lot of the people.

To this end, he disclosed that the government’s core role in Cross River State is to protect the governed.
The governor stated this in Calabar after listening to a presentation by a consulting firm and a bank on how to increase the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by introducing new tax heads.

 Ayade, who lamented  that the model presented by the investors which has worked in Lagos and Ogun States to boost their internal generated revenue would rather add to the hardship being suffered by the people.
His word: “I want you to sympathise with the state of Cross River, we are a state whose corporate philosophy as a government is bringing government to the people that need it the most. We are a people who believe in the Afro-centric theory of providing a shoulder for your tired brother to lean on.

“If we deepen this theory, it might come to a point when there is a Kantian impression that tends to equate government and the economy in such a way that the government’s core role in Cross River State is to protect the governed. There is no developmental effort, no deliberate effort of raising IGR that will be premised on taxing your people to prosperity, and as a government that has a corporate conscience, at any point you put a tax, you should ask yourself what you are giving to the people in return.”

Speaking further, he said: “When I do the Home Certification Process at a cost to a man who is a civil servant, I will be putting an extra burden on a shoulder which is tired with a deliberate struggle to see how I can get money and raise my IGR. I might celebrate the 11billlion in three months but I have put one of my citizens out there in bigger pain. I don’t believe in taxing people in order to raise money, I believe in tasking my brain to raise money. The kind of program you will bring to me that will excite me is the kind that will take advantage of our natural resources and convert it to wealth.”

The governor lamented the fact that “Africans have always had ways of going through the short route.  It shocks me that a man would go to farm, grows rice and by the time he finishes his harvest, one bag of rice which is 50kg and which sells for N9000  whareas someone sits in Singapore and produces a chip, small chip and it sells for N120,000. While the other one is mechanistic, here it is manual, growing rice like an African man, the other one is growing on technology. He is using his brain and getting more money.”

“I represent the people who voted for me, their interest comes first. So rather than tax, I will like you to tell me how we can produce Vaseline from cocoa. These options have run through my brain severally and I told myself that I will not task my people in order to seek prosperity.”